Taxpayers to subsidise energy companies

British households are to pay for the costly “green” measures that the British government has planned to take in order to encourage more investment in nuclear plants and wind farms.

British Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, is to announce this Tuesday that the energy companies including Centrica and EDF will receive a fixed price higher than the market price for nuclear power and wind farms generated electricity.

Huhne has already declared that the government would not be able to provide financial assistance for subsidizing a new generation of nuclear plants tacitly, indicating that the British taxpayer would be directly responsible for the heavy cost of incentives.

It is estimated that the British consumers’ electricity bills increase by 30 percent. However, the British government will try to push the “green reforms” through making Britain an attractive place for investors in nuclear power plants and wind farms.

Single pensioners are expected to be the hardest hit by the reforms as energy bills constitute larger shares of their costs. “A 47pc increase in electricity unit costs, envisaged under the electricity market reform, would send UK electricity prices towards being the highest in the European Union,” experts from the University of Cambridge said in a report.